New cache of fresh neurons found in human brains

YOUNG brain cells have been seen in a novel location in the brain. The finding raises hopes that the cells could be utilised to help people recover after a stroke, or to treat degenerative brain diseases.

Last year, Jonas Frisén at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and his colleagues showed that brain cells younger than their owner turn up in the hippocampus, a brain region crucial to memory.

They have now found that such brain cells also move to a golf-ball-sized structure called the striatum. This region is involved in a range of functions, including learning and memory. These particular traits, shared as they are with the hippocampus, lead Frisén to speculate that brain cells appearing here may also be involved in learning. "New neurons may convey some sort of plasticity," he says, which might help people learn and adapt.

To reveal the younger cells, the team exploited the fact that atmospheric levels of radioactive carbon-14 have been falling since nuke tests raised them up during the cold war. New cells incorporate this carbon-14, and its levels in the various cells of 30 donated brains revealed neurons that had been created during the lifetimes of the donors (Cell, doi.org/rm8).

This article appeared in print under the headline "Bomb tests reveal youthful brain cells"

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